The Code (Ice Dragons Hockey Book 1) Page 2

  She leaned into him, still unsteady on her feet, and in a smooth motion, he went against every instinct that said she’d hate this, and he scooped her up in his arms. She weighed less than he bench-pressed, and he held her firmly.

  But she struggled. “Let me down.”

  She twisted in his arms, and he loosened his hold only so that he could get a better grip. Finally, he had her pinned in his arms, and she continued to struggle without effect.

  “Keep still. Please, Kat, let me help.”

  She cursed again, but more telling was that despite her cussing and fighting, she allowed a soft exhalation of breath against his throat. Then she didn’t argue anymore and relaxed into his hold. He released the grip a little, and she immediately attempted to wriggle free. So he tightened it again. He knew all her tricks.

  He and Kat constantly argued. From breakfast cereals to hockey plays, she had opinions on everything, and he loved that about her. They fought and scratched and chirped each other whenever they were together.

  But right then she was hurt; she looked like a stiff wind would knock her down.

  Ryan pulled open the door one-handed.

  Meeks was waiting. “Sir?” In that word was a multitude of questions. Why are you carrying her? Where are you going? Promise me you’ll get her to a doctor.

  “Put me the hell down,” Kat snapped and wriggled to the point that Ryan had to drop her to her feet. She smoothed her top, a flush high on her cheeks.

  He thought he heard her use the word “Neanderthal” under her breath. He was used to that; it was her go-to insult for him.

  “This way,” Meeks said.

  He followed her, just a few steps behind Kathryn, who could out stubborn even the most persistent defenseman.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Meeks said as they left, and Ryan acknowledged the comment with a nod.

  He walked to his SUV, assisted Kat into the passenger seat as best she would let him, and then buckled her up, despite the fact she was batting at his hands to get in there and do it for herself.

  “Quit that,” he warned.

  Amazingly, she did, but not without a low mutter that sounded something like a combination of “asshole” and “hockey player.” She smelled of antiseptic, but under that was the same intoxicating scent that was all Kathryn. Enough to get him thinking of the need to touch her that hissed and bubbled under his skin.

  Stop it. Kat’s hurt. Kat needs me.

  He stopped by the passenger door and looked up at the night sky, at the clouds obliterating the stars and hiding the moon. A few deep breaths and he collected his sanity from wherever he’d left it. Then he rounded the vehicle and climbed in, buckled up, and started the engine. When he was sure he could pull away before she jumped out, he began to drive and made his announcement.

  “I’m taking you to the hospital.” He used the tone he seldom pulled on Kat, the one that brooked no discussion, but he knew he’d lost as soon as her lips thinned and she frowned.

  “I don’t need the hospital.”

  “Kat, just let them look you over.”

  “Ryan, for God’s sake. I have no broken bones, I didn’t hit my head, my breathing is fine. I didn’t get shot—”

  “Kat.”

  “Take me home.”

  “No,” he snapped, just as firm in his intent.

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  She unsnapped her belt and made to leave the car, even though they were traveling at twenty miles per hour at this point. But Ryan was too fast, pulling over and pressing the button to lock all the doors. Kat leaned over him to release the master lock, but he held her back, only softening his hold when she let out a huff of pain.

  “Sit the fuck back and put your belt on, Kat,” he growled.

  “This is stupid,” she groused, but she sat back in her seat and pulled the belt across, and for a moment there was silence in the car. Then she sighed noisily. “No hospital. Please, Ry.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I want to go home.”

  Her voice was lower, not filled with determination and anger but with a hint of vulnerability that Ryan knew she would never admit to.

  He beat a steady rhythm with his thumbs on the steering wheel. Every fiber of him wanted her checked out by a professional. What would Loki do in his place? Would her brother simply drive her to the hospital and ignore everything she said?

  Yes, probably, but he was playing the role of parent and brother all at the same time. Loki had been all those things to her since their parents died when he was only sixteen, and he took his responsibilities very seriously. The police had been the ones to break the news: Loki and Kat’s parents were dead in a freak auto accident. Ryan had done everything a sixteen-year-old kid could do for his best friend and his best friend’s sister. He’d become like a second brother.

  Loki and Kat had moved in with their aunt, a woman who was more interested in soap operas and smoking than bringing up her sister’s kids. Not that there wasn’t love there. Ryan was sure their Aunt Celia was a good woman; she just hid it very well. He privately thought that the life-insurance payout from Loki and Kat’s parents’ death had smoothed the path with having a place to stay.

  As soon as Loki turned eighteen, he assumed full responsibility for Kat and found a place in Vermont near to the Dragons. Kat continued her studies there. The Dragons had helped facilitate that move. They’d invested in the young kid from Canada, and he’d paid with complete devotion to the team. Hell, he’d signed with them until 2021—that really was commitment.

  Loki had the kind of bond with his team that Ryan had envied. The kind of connection that he was now working on finding himself—

  “Nicky wouldn’t take me to the hospital.”

  Kat interrupted his thought process. She called her brother Nicky, but Nicolas Lecour would always be Loki to the team.

  I’m not Loki. Not her brother.

  “He would,” he argued. “He’d have you there so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you.”

  Then he winced at his words. Something had hit her, all right, and hurt her.

  She glanced at him with that expression that caught him in the heart every time. The one where she looked like he hung the stars. The one that meant he would instantly do anything for her.

  “But this is you…,” she said softly. “You won’t make me.”

  She made him feel like a strong man, a better man, when she looked at him that way. As if, under the anger and the persona and the dedication that made Ryan the man he was, there could be a nice guy.

  She even added in a small pout and puppy eyes. He was so being played.

  Loki called it the little-sister look, the one that always worked with him. But Ryan couldn’t help it if he didn’t like to think of her giving him any kind of sibling look at all.

  “You can’t go home,” he said quietly, hopeful she would listen without arguing. “What if you have a concussion? What if—” something happens to you again? What if I’m not there when it does?

  “Ryan….”

  “Kat.” He was tired and worried, and she wasn’t listening. “This is ridiculous.”

  She laid a hand on his arm, and her expression was raw, way past a need to get around him. This was honesty at its most brutal.

  He heaved a big sigh. “Okay.” And finally, he headed through the city. Only when they reached Highway 2 and he headed north would it become obvious that he was taking her back to the house he shared with her brother and not to the apartment in South Burlington that she called home.

  When he turned off to his place, she tensed but didn’t say anything.

  The house he and Loki shared had an extra bedroom with a rollaway; he’d take that, and she could have his room. And when Loki woke up in the morning, oblivious to everything that had happened tonight, he would see that Kat had been hurt but Ryan had done his bit in looking after his sister.

  “How is Nicky’s knee?” she asked after a while.

  “He’s out of it completely, h
opped up on pain meds.”

  It had been Ryan’s cell that she called, but she might well have tried her brother first.

  “I didn’t call Nicky at all,” she explained as if she could read his mind. “I knew he wouldn’t be able to come and get me. That’s why I called you. You’re my alternate.”

  Ryan shot her a glance. “Did you just make a hockey joke?”

  “What else do you expect? You and Nicky indoctrinated me.”

  Ryan considered the comment. “What about Evan?”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s your boyfriend?”

  “Hmm.” She went quiet.

  “Kat?”

  She huffed a loud sigh. “I didn’t call Evan from the precinct.”

  Silence.

  She didn’t call her boyfriend? But she called Ryan? What does that mean?

  She ignored the bombshell about Evan. “He’s working in New York at the moment.”

  “Okay, when does he get here?”

  “Not any time soon I hope. I don’t want him here, any more than I want Nicky, because Nicky would have wanted to kill someone.”

  Ryan held his tongue at first, but even he wasn’t that good at hiding how he felt. “I tell you this: if I ever see the man who laid a hand on you, I will kill him, never mind Loki.”

  “Ryan, you can’t….”

  She didn’t finish the statement. Probably would have said something like “Ryan, you can’t kill someone—you’ll end up in jail.”

  They managed the rest of the ride in silence, reaching the small gated estate a little before 3:00 a.m. He parked outside on the drive and was out and around to her side before she exited the car. He held out his hands.

  She waved them away. “I can walk,” she snapped. Then when he stepped back, she softened a little. “Sorry, but I can, though.” She leaned on him. “I’ll just use you like this.”

  “Use all you want.” He blushed scarlet when he realized what he’d said. Thank God it was dark out there.

  The security light flicked on. Fucking awesome timing.

  He hoped to hell his embarrassment wasn’t too obvious, but she didn’t seem to notice anything. Together they headed to the entrance, and as he let them in the front door, he had a sudden thought. “Where is your car?”

  “Still at the pump I guess. Or the cops might have moved it? The keys are in my bag now.”

  “I’ll get it in the morning.”

  “You can drop me off—”

  “You’re not going back there. I’ll get it.” How, he didn’t know, but she wouldn’t be going back there anytime soon. “And your cell?”

  “I have hardly any charge now. It’s in my purse….” She looked confused for a moment and pressed a hand to her temple.

  “It’s okay, it’s an iPhone, you can use my charger in the bedroom.”

  He sat her on the sofa and then went into the kitchen to get water, wondering if she needed Tylenol or something, but she called him back. He grabbed the bottle of water from the refrigerator and walked back out into the wide-open sitting room.

  She’d curled up in the corner of the sofa, much as she’d been in the precinct. But this time she didn’t look brave and strong and like she could fight demons. No, this time her legs were under her, her hands crossed over her chest, and she’d pulled on the Dragons jersey that had been lying on the back of the sofa.

  His jersey.

  His number. Seventeen, on the sleeve.

  Confusion flooded him at seeing that. She didn’t wear Dragons colors normally, her preference firmly fixed on the old Sundin sweater she had from the early years of following the Leafs, the team local to their hometown outside Toronto.

  Kat didn’t attend that many games, she had a demanding career, and she’d lived hockey up to this point in her life.

  Ryan opened his mouth to chirp at her about wearing his shirt—his default setting—and stopped himself when she looked up at him, and he saw the extent of her bruises again. The idea of someone hurting her stole his words. He handed her the water and sat on the small coffee table in front of her. The thing creaked, but it had survived worse than his weight before and held solid. The Dragons’ goalie had once sprawled right across the damn thing, and he was built like a brick wall.

  “You want to talk?” he asked, keeping his tone gentle.

  She sipped at the water and kept her eyes on him with a steady gaze. “Nothing to tell, really. My shift was done and I dropped Ally at her place, but I needed gas. I filled up, paid, and was grabbing a coffee, right? Just normal stuff. But this guy came in with a gun, demanded money, and when the cops arrived decided one way of getting out alive was to take me as a hostage.”

  She explained it like it happened every day, like it was okay for her to put herself in harm’s way. Did she not get it? He respected she was a paramedic. She’d been one for three years, worked side by side with Ally and the firefighters at the station, in all kinds of shit situations, but to put herself in a position like this on her off time, with no radio backup and without her partner.

  And a gun?

  Ryan’s temper flared again, and he focused in on the bruises that ringed her throat, right where the tiny pulse was proof of precious life.

  He dipped his head, unable to hold her gaze when his temper burned so bright inside him. “He held a gun on you. If I ever see him….”

  “He was high on something. I tried to talk him down, but he wasn’t listening—”

  Horror had him looking up at her again, and he couldn’t help the explosion of anger. “What the hell? You tried to talk him down? You don’t do shit like that, Kat.”

  “It’s what I’m trained to do, and it was working. But then, I don’t know, it all went wrong, and he—”

  She pressed a hand to her mouth, and her expressive eyes looked suddenly bright. Was she going to cry? Ryan couldn’t handle this; he’d never been able to handle her being upset. What could be worse than a criminal holding a gun to her head, having his hands on her throat…? “What, Kat?”

  She bowed her head and full-body shuddered, wiping her mouth.

  None of this was making sense.

  “He kissed me.”

  “What?” Ryan was blindsided; that made no sense at all. He sat upright, wondering if he knew anyone who could track this asshole down so that he and Loki could introduce him to what it meant to be in a fight.

  She looked up at him, and there were real tears there. He wanted to make them disappear as he’d done when she was a child, when a piggyback from her brother’s best friend was enough to have her tears vanishing and laughter in their place.

  He couldn’t do that now. That had been a very long time ago, before he’d kissed her on prom night in the vain hope she would want him back—and she’d turned and run.

  Of course she ran, why wouldn’t she?

  “He gave himself up,” she began patiently, swallowing the tears and firming her chin. “Dropped the gun. And then he pushed me back against the wall and kissed me. The cops pulled him off me. I couldn’t get him off me, Ryan….”

  He had no words, no sense of what he was listening to, and he didn’t catch her in time before she stood up.

  “I need to sleep,” she said.

  “You can have my bed.”

  “I don’t need to take your room—”

  “Just use my damn bed, Kat,” he snapped, and she closed her eyes briefly, her shoulders sagging. He couldn’t help it, not only did he have this image of someone hurting her, but kissing her as well? He couldn’t handle the feeling of utter hopelessness mixed with fury that churned inside him.

  “Okay,” she said in a small voice.

  He instantly felt like complete shit, but he didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. Instead, he walked her out of the front room and down the corridor that led to his half of the house, opening the door and ushering her inside. He hadn’t made the bed that morning. In fact, his room looked like an explosion in a sports store, full of promotional c
lothing from a company he had a contract with, and other stuff sent to him over the season: pucks, caps to sign, jerseys in last year’s designs to give away, posters rolled in tubes, all piled in one corner of his large room.

  “Sorry ’bout the mess.”

  Kat shrugged. “You forget I had to share with my brother when we were kids. Nothing like the smell of used hockey gear to wake you up in the morning.”

  “It’s all new stuff, clean,” he defended, then shut his mouth when she sent him a halfway affectionate look.

  “Well, duh,” she said.

  “Okay, so Loki knows nothing. You want me to get to him first when he wakes up? Explain, so he doesn’t go out and kill someone?” Ryan was teasing, anything to get her to smile.

  Instead, she grew defensive. “I can handle my brother.” Then she seemed to zone out, and her fingers went to her lips again.

  Ryan ended up standing in the doorway wondering what the hell he should be doing. Going? Staying? Waking up Loki, if that was even possible with the post-op meds he was on.

  “Ryan?”

  Kat’s voice was impossibly quiet, and Ryan’s heart twisted. She looked lost, as though all the sass and confidence had drained out of her. “Can you fix this?”

  “I’ll fix anything you need me to,” he said without thought or hesitation. What did she need? He could track the guy down, beat him into the ground; he bet over half the team would have his back.

  But what she actually said next floored him completely.

  “Can you kiss me?”

  He blinked and swore the earth stopped moving and time didn’t exist. “What?” He knew he sounded just this side of horrified.

  She stepped back until her knees hit the bed, and looked down and away. “Never mind.”

  Kiss her? Do the one thing he promised himself he would never do again?

  This was dangerous. The concept of kissing the only woman in his life that he’d ever truly loved terrified him. Kat was off limits. Not only because he would never want to hurt her, but because she had the capacity to hurt him.

  And then she looked up at him, shoulders back, her stance solid. “No, actually, this isn’t a situation I want to brush off. I need your help, Ryan. I need you to kiss me so I can have that memory and not his.”